Books from the Emblem Collection of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Since the 1940’s the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library has
been building a collection of emblem books written from 1540-1800, published
in Germany, France, Italy, Spain and England. Emblem books can be considered
the multi-media publications of the 16th through the 18th centuries. Each
emblem is composed of three constitutive elements - a motto, an illustration
or "pictura" in the form of a woodcut or engraving, and an explanatory poem
or "subscriptio." An emblem is more than the sum of its parts, because the
interplay between text and image produces a greater meaning than any of the
individual components can provide. Since 1998 the Rare Book & Manuscript
Library has been enhancing access to the German emblem books through
digitization. The digitization efforts are now being coordinated with the
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel. These two institutions are
cooperating on the Project "Emblematica On-Line," funded by an NEH/DFG
digital humanities grant to present emblem books in an innovative digital
environment and to develop a portal for a key genre of Renaissance texts and
images. The OpenEmblem Portal hosted at Illinois offers the ability to
search and browse emblems from a variety of perspectives. Visit the
German Emblem
Book Project website.
